الكاتب: Johan Galtung

Concluding Remarks, Colloque, Université Catholique Lyon, 5-6 Feb 2016 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948–the two Conventions of 16 November 1966 are international law–was edited by a committee of Men; Older, White, Bourgeois, Lawyers, French. MOWBLF. Nothing about women’s and children’s rights; wait till the 1980s. The perspective focuses on individuals, not collectives, peoples. There are no rights to access to toilet, nor to sexuality: well- mannered bourgeois do such things but do not talk-write about it. Art. 27.2 even protects remuneration for professionals like themselves. The “human rights=legal claims” discourse defines underdog goals but is…

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To Antonio, editor of TMS, and to Prof. Johan Galtung: Thanks for posting my YEAR OF HOPE 2016 Poem. I hope it will soon become a reality. With your help, and the help of all peace-loving people of our Global Village, it indeed can become our reality soon if we all join our peace hands together. However, there are two drawbacks that bother me in TRANSCEND and mars it from making it a true PEACE JOURNAL: Daesh – The Islamic State will not listen to any negotiations. Their goal is clear: kill all the people that oppose their Caliphate. They…

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To navigate these difficult conceptual waters we need some rules. Here are three suggestions (the violence can be direct–as sometimes prescribed by the Abrahamic religions–or structural as by Hinduism): Anchor “religious fundamentalism” in religious scriptures taken literally according to the fundamentalists, not as “interpreted”; Anchor “extremism” in violent action, verbal or physical; Anchor “religious extremism” in violent action justified-legitimized by religious scriptures, by fundamentalists or not. Fundamentalism has to do with inner faith, belief. Extremism has to do with outer violence against Other, and against Self (like flagellation for being a sinner). Keep them separate. And be careful. We can…

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Jondal-Hardanger-Norway Let us have a look, and see what can be done. [1] Economies. NYSE is falling; China is consuming, with problems; the West blames China, not itself, for all. The truth is over-reliance on one commodity, oil-gas, hitting vulnerable economies doubly. Steep fall in price: $120-130 to $30-20, close to 1973 from $1 to $10. Steep fall in demand for that globally toxic product; a sign of rationality (but, the other globally toxic product, derivatives for speculation?) The currencies of oil-producers tumble. stocks fall; in Norway to the tune of half the state budget in three weeks (Finansavisen 21Jan…

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The state system emerged in the 17th century, with institutions for force. One was for internal and one for external use: the national police and the national military, national standing for the dominant nation in the states. The role of the police was to protect elites against theft and violence by the people; crimes by the law. And the role of the military was to protect the states against each other. Both police and military occasionally initiated violence. The description just given still holds very well for the USA. “Banking scandals” give us insight in class-conscious “justice”. Police patrol the…

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Alfaz, Spain Democracy is rule–decision-making–by the consent of the people, the demos. There is a very good argument: the people will suffer the consequences. Hence rule of, by, and for the people. Problem: which level dominates the decision-making? Level [4] national (government-parliament-courts); [3] regional (provinces-departments), [2] local (LAs, municipalities), level [1] individuals? In theory [1] is primary, basic, sovereign; in practice level [4]. Through elected representatives, packaged in electoral districts; representing individual preferences, packaged in party programs. Comment, from Germany: “The sovereignty comes from the people–and never comes back” (“vom Volke raus, und kommt niemals zurück“). The representatives kindly open…

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Baher Kamal, in –And All of a Sudden Syria!: “The “big five” /the UN veto powers/ have just agreed /Res 2254 of 18-12-2015/–time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy–they waited until 300,000 innocent civilians were killed–three million humans lost as refugees and homeless at home, hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily US, British, French and Russian bombing carried out”. No Chinese bombing. One term in the resolution, road map, already spells failure. There is another reason: missing issues. But something can be done. Roads twist, turn and may be far from straight. Traveling a…

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According to UNESCO, wars start in the minds of men. Well, something–like unsolved conflicts and unconciled traumas–passes minds on the way to war. But UNESCO got the unintended focus on male humans right. Minds matter, above all pre-programmed minds. This New Year 2016 editorial minds minds and mind-sets, the set minds. For peace culture. – A case: New York Times editorial 30 Dec 2015, “The Importance of Retaking Ramadi”. Being the capital of a governorate–IS uses them as building blocks–this was a major military victory. However, the mind-set of the writer confuses retaking space with retaking minds. Sunni Arab minds.…

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Thanks dear Oxford students for the Xmas gift, challenging the cult of Cecil Rhodes–colonialist, classist, racist. He was also an Aryan supremacist, like Hitler but for the Anglo-Saxon variety, against the German (and often criticized in this column). The commemorative plaque has been removed. The statue may follow. Maybe also the “Rhodes Scholarship”, as ‘certificate of excellence?’ Much will join Cecil Rhodes and another racist, Woodrow Wilson, down the drain. Like Western economic supremacy. In 1980 G7–USA-Canada-UK-Germany-France-Italy-Japan–had 62% of Gross World Product, BRICS had 15%. In 2015, only 35 years later, G7 is halved and BRICS doubled; at 31% in…

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From very high up three major countries-states stand out clearly: China, the most populous; Russia, the largest; USA, the most military. With three leaders, Xi, Putin, Obama, with much power on their hands. And here is the key hypothesis, presumably more right than wrong: China-Xi: positive peace; Russia-Putin: negative peace; USA-Obama: war. We have in mind China–also a region–building relations for reasonably mutual and equal benefit with China all over the world, spinning Asia-Europe-Africa together in a road-rail-ship-air Silk network available to all (with major mistakes in the South China Sea). We have in mind Russia–itself also a region–calling to…

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In that eco-system humanity has since industrialization upset balances and now suffers the consequences, trying to tackle them. COP21, the UN 195 States conference in Paris, reached the unanimous agreement demanded of them after two weeks of hard work. However, as USA points out, an agreement is not a treaty with legally binding targets. Droughts-storms-floods and surface warming: land-oceans-glaciers. As glaciers melt oceans and rivers will over-flood major settled land. With the current 1 degree C warming bad and 2 degrees intolerable, they settled for the 1.5C goal “if possible”; a compromise. Better .5 only. The dominant theory sees greenhouse…

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The process has now gone full circle, from Sykes-Picot Agreement negotiated from 1915 to 16 May 1916, about control of the Ottoman Empire, when beaten, to England now joining France in bombing Syria. “Violence In and By Paris” two weeks ago was wrong about England wanting to stay out: the House of Commons on 02 Dec 2015 voted 397 to 223 for bombing; 56 Labor MPs for, only 7 Conservative MPs against. Russia played a minor role in Sykes-Picot as now also in bombing maybe mainly the opposition to Assad. As Robert Savio points out, “They all fight to the…

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Short answer: No. The Paris event triggered war journalism; no peace journalism was observed. To doubt that anti-IS violence will work is not peace journalism, only war journalism with question marks. Peace journalism was conceived in the 1960s as a reaction to foreign news negativism, and focus on actors and elite people/countries. Not as advocacy of peace, but as journalism about peace; like war journalism is not advocacy of war, but indispensable journalism about war, reporting what happens, and who is winning. It can be done well or not, and often becomes propaganda for one side, in national more than…

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Atlanta, Georgia, USA The atrocity in Paris seems to trigger the word “terrorism” with a higher frequency than ever, in the media, from the politicians. Doing so, they sign their intellectual capitulation: trust me, I am not going to try to understand anything. Watching politicians on 56 US TV channels in Georgia there was not a single word analyzing why?; like underlying conflicts and traumas. Nor conciliation and solution. Only a description of what?, the horrible violence. And what to do: more violence, war. With a question mark though: Will it work? The whole Western world was living up to…

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Answer: Nowhere, because Europe does not exist. On the axis of five stages of positive peace, the process came to a standstill at stage 3. They made miracles out of stage 1–cooperation for mutual and equal benefit–and were good at stage 2–empathy with each other, your problems are also mine, your solutions are also mine. And then the long march through the corridors of institutionalization, stage 3, solidifying; from French-German cooperation to the ever changing treaties for an ever deeper European Union. And then it stopped. Stage 4–fusion of the member states into an Europe–is not there and will not…

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We have war and peace, theory and practice. And deeper down cultures of war and peace, notions of what the world is or could be. The latter is not necessarily peace, could also mean removing obstacles to war. Timothy Snyder, “Hitler’s World” (NY Review of Books, 24 Sep 2015) and Greg Grandin, “The Kissinger Effect: The relentless militarism of the national-security state and its perverse justification begin with Henry Kissinger” (The Nation, 28 Sep 2015) are both on that line. Hitler’s World derives from Darwinist struggle for niches, with survival of the fittest. His niche is not the whole world…

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L’Alfàs del Pi, Alicante, Spain Our focus is on transactions: I give something to you, you give something to me. The double flow of which lo social is made. We then limit the focus to economic transactions, of factors of production–resources, labor, capital, technology, administration–and products–goods, services. The public sector may control the factors; extraction-production-distribution-consumption is done by the public or private (or both) sectors, depending on the type of economy. In modern economies a money flow will be part of economic transactions. And we generalize (Felipe Briones) to transactions of any kind: I pay you for losing the soccer…

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Keynote, 13th Session World Public Forum “Dialogue of Civilizations” – Rhodes, Greece, 9 Oct 2015 The strength of this forum is its civilization focus; let us use it for analysis and remedies. Major forms of disorder use violence; war is state organized violence. The most belligerent states are the United States of America and Israel, both with civilization roots. National Evangelism, the US Protestant Christian civilization– more national than evangelical–justifies US warfare as exceptionalism of a people chosen by God, with a manifest destiny to run the world. Orthodox Judaism justifies Israeli warfare to conquer and expand from Nile to…

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The Oregon community college was “the 45th school shooting this year in America; the 142nd school shooting since the Newton massacre in 2012”, Matthew Albracht–Peace Alliance–who adds: 25% of women experience domestic violence, 6 million children witness it every year, 28% of children are bullied during the year and they are 2 to 9 times more likely to commit suicide. What can be done? 10 points: 1) Gun control, of course. But the point is not only sales control but possession control with very strict laws for possession and making illegal possession a federal crime. With an average of at…

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Bogotá, 30 Sep 2015 The accords were signed a week ago with still much work to do this coming half a year. 23 March 2016 is the deadline. However, are they peace accords? Or absence of violence eliminating “that other army”, for Weber’s state monopoly on ultima ratio regis, even strengthening the government’s army? That Western concept of peace practiced recently in Sri Lanka and Nepal, against LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and Maoists? Leaving untouched the problems that brought them into being unsolved? And the word “peace” violated, as “conflict”, saying “post-conflict”, as if nothing more to solve.…

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The young US Republic, unwilling to share the Atlantic Seaboard with London, emerged victoriously in 1812 with a strong army centered in the South. Manifest Destiny pointed West, then also South, and, stepping into the shoes of the dying Spanish empire in 1898, to the whole world. Trade was needed for growth; in 1853 Admiral Perry opened Tokugawa Japan. The Japanese challenge was its closure. The Table compares US policies to 6 challengers to US world hegemony: Japan, Germany, Italy, Russia, China, Islam. And: Western Europe, formerly as colonialism, now as a potential No. 7. US policy is seen as…

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